


drop to my knees (but you haunt me more)

by ficfacfoe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreams, Leviathan Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Season/Series 07, absolutely cursed piece of writing, can already feel the boomerang energy of me posting this coming back to hit me square in the face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficfacfoe/pseuds/ficfacfoe
Summary: this is how dean deals with losing cas during the leviathan!cas arc. (he doesn't.)
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	drop to my knees (but you haunt me more)

Castiel has been gone for months. After opening up Purgatory, he’s pretty much presumed dead. There is the whole issue of Sam hallucinating Lucifer, so Dean deflects. Leviathans are after them, are everywhere and damn near immortal, so Dean deflects. Dean doesn’t talk, doesn’t even dare think these days. He sure as hell isn’t trying to call anyone. He certainly isn’t praying to a deceased celestial being. Not a chance.

His dreams, however, have other ideas. 

First, right after Cas walks himself into that lake, he’s on his knees a lot. In his dreams, he clutches at dripping wet fabric, wrings his hands around it. Sometimes, he rips the trenchcoat. Sometimes, he’s wearing it. He wakes up disturbed, the taste of something holy stinging bitterly on his tongue. He swallows thickly and ignores it. 

After a while, his dreams are less about the coat, and more about the angel inside it. Those are proving to be more difficult to ignore. Dean sees Castiel’s face, stretched out large against the sky. The image grows and shrinks a lot in those dreams, abstractions of a memory, but him and Cas are never eye to eye in those. Sometimes, the angel’s eyes change to demonic black, sometimes they glow yellow, but worst of all are the dreams in which they are just Castiel’s eyes, staring off into some far distance, never meeting Dean’s. He resorts to begging, in those dreams. 

The morning after another all-night-long hunt, when he’s about to drift off into a fitful sleep in an uncomfortable motel room bed, Dean lets the words rush to the surface of his restless subconscious.  _ You’re still a goddamn angel, aren’t you? _ His heavy head spins with the ridiculousness of it all. He’s awake, there is no excuse for this. Castiel is dead.  _ A dead angel. Is that even possible? Come on.  _ It is, and Dean knows this. But he doesn’t have proof, can’t be sure that Cas isn’t up in heaven, somehow Leviathan-free. He might just be there, angelic powers intact, able to hear Dean. Still an angel. 

And then his tired, tired mind supplies a very quiet,  _ you’re still my angel, aren’t you, _ and Dean gasps, shooting into a sitting position like someone’s attacked him with a live wire. Wide awake. 

“What the fuck,” he whispers to himself, rubbing a hand over his eyes, feeling woozy. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers and tries to shake it off.  _ My angel.  _ It keeps flickering like the echo of a dream, or the misplaced chorus of a strange song stuck in his head. Exhaustedly, Dean sinks back into his pillows. 

“You’re in my head, you dickhead,” singsongs his own voice heavenwards, already on the verge of sleep again.  _ You’re in my head all the damn time.  _

His muscles relax as Dean falls, slowly, into the dull softness of slumber.  _ Cas, I swear, if you don’t show up anytime soon…  _ With a sound somewhere between a grunt and the beginning of a snore, he enters dreamland. In his dream, all he hears himself saying, all he hears himself calling for is  _ Cas, my angel. My angel. _

The dreams continue changing shape. There is a wide range of different genres, anything from gruesome nightmares to hopelessly sappy reunions, but all of them feature Cas, recognisably Cas, not at all abstract anymore. And after almost all of them, Dean wakes up livid. Especially when they’re not horrific nightmares. How dare his mind play out fantasies in which he isn’t mad at the angel at all? He never holds on to how those dreams soothe every ache in his tired body. Dean pushes away any relief he feels in his sleep when he cries in the angel’s arms. He wakes up and gets so angry, wipes at his eyes that are wet from sleep, from sleep, only from sleep. 

There is downtime between hunts. Dean could use this time to work through some of this. He does not. Dean drinks until he passes out, so naturally, dreamland is whiskey flavoured and smells like cold smoke. He’s in a bar, a bar full of beautiful women. He grins lazily at a few of them as they pass him by where he’s slumped back in a corner booth. There is the distinct background noise of his own voice repeating, “Cas, where are you,” on a loop. 

The dream changes walls, they’re in a warehouse, him and all the women from the bar. Dean sees himself from across the room. He blinks. His eyes are hurting, he can’t open them all the way and everything is blurry. He calls Cas again, his mouth sticky and difficult to open. This is a sensation somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Briefly, he is aware that this a dream. Suddenly, the whole warehouse is flooded with blinding light and the flutter of wings, of course, and he curses himself half awake but the dream catches him, pulls him back in deeper. He wants to see. 

Now, he’s in his body again. 

He’s lying back on the floor, a different floor, staring at the shadows of wings on a low ceiling. Motel room. Castiel is towering over him, and is decidedly not Castiel. His face looks waxen, a stranger’s smile plastered across it. This one’s a nightmare, Dean’s useless brain supplies from the off. Heart pounding, he scrambles backwards, away from this Leviathan filled body in a trenchcoat. They’re staring at each other. Dean has a knife in his hands but it’s too heavy to lift, even when he uses the strength of both his arms. His body feels made of gum, he’s shaking, pulse fluttering wildly. 

Castiel’s face is pulled into a grimace, and Leviathans speak, “You don’t really wanna hurt this precious body, do you now?” 

Dean is sitting with his back pressed up against the wall now, helpless. The bed is empty. The bed is gone. Castiel crouches down in front of him. He takes the knife from Dean, who can’t move a muscle. He can’t even scream. His throat hurts from how much he can’t scream at Cas to come back, to regain control over his vessel. Castiel points the knife at his own throat. A strangled noise finally escapes Dean’s raw throat, slices right through his invisible gag. 

Leviathans have Castiel laughing at it in a way that makes Dean’s skin crawl. He feels like a little kid, terrified and hopeless, unable to move and voiceless. 

“Poor Dean,” Castiel’s mouth is forced to snarl, before his fists attack Dean. They punch all the remaining air out of him, hurling Dean from side to side until he’s motionless and bloody. 

Finally, Dean whispers, “Come back, Cas. Come back to me.” And, uselessly aware that this is a dream, Dean says, “I want you in this, I want to see you. I want to see  _ you _ .”

A switch is flicked audibly, the lights turn on. 

Cas is kneeling over Dean’s swollen face, his skin pounding in pain. There is no backdrop to this, no motel room anymore, just white noise and white light and the outline of wings. “I’m sorry,” is whispered over Dean’s shattered cheekbones. The hurt is unbearable. Their faces are close, and Cas reaches out two fingers to touch at Dean’s forehead, but before he can make that healing contact, the light bursts and burns out. In shadows, Dean sees Castiel’s face veil with malicious Leviathan intent again. 

“Oh, were you about to kiss and make up?” they snicker, pressing Castiel’s hands tightly around Dean’s throat. He can’t breathe or see anything anymore. Someone strikes a match. “I’m sorry,” echoes around Dean’s empty head, Cas’s breath whispering across his face once again before he passes out in the depths of this nightmare. Dean wakes up on the floor next to his bed, back in spasms, whiskey bottle clutched in his hand, and he screams. He throws the bottle at the opposing wall. Glass shatters all over the floor. He’s so pissed off, he crawls right back into the bed he fell out of. He opens the small window, twists and turns uncomfortably in the day’s first rays of sunlight, and falls asleep again. 

He should’ve gotten up. Dean knows he’s dreaming this time around. He knows daylight is disturbing his sleep, now. This dream is lucid, he could pull himself out of it, but then Cas is right in front of him and is  _ Cas _ again, with his head cocked to the side, an innocent, questioning look on his face. Their eyes meet. 

“What’s wrong?” Cas asks, and Dean is very, very weak. 

Tired. Just sleepy. He feels his body sinking deeper into it. 

They’re standing in an open field. The air is fresh. He hears himself mumbling, with a slow grin, “About to kiss and make up…” and Cas is looking at him with growing, honest confusion. 

Cas starts, “Why would we-” but Dean is grabbing him by the lapels of his stupid coat with an angry huff of a breath. He knows he’s dreaming. He feels in control. He can work with this dream. He can get out his frustrations, can yell at Cas and shove him and shake him and be angry with him and -- Cas smiles up at him. A soft, real smile. Dean feels any control he thought he had rush out of his sleeping, slack body at once. He falls to his knees at the angel’s feet. 

When he glances up, Cas is frowning. He looks genuinely confused, like he doesn’t know this is Dean’s dream, and of course he doesn’t, because it’s Dean’s dream, it’s not like Cas is actually  _ there _ . Dean is holding on to the hem of Cas’s coat, is pressing his cheek to Cas’s thigh. He doesn’t know how he got into this position. He can’t fight his own body leaning into Cas.

“Tell me how to bring you back,” Dean pleads. His lips are dry and crack with the effort of speaking. He bleeds the same as when Cas’s punches bust his skin open. He doesn’t care. This isn’t that dream anymore. 

“I’m right here, Dean,” Cas states, and Dean laughs over a single sob. He falls backwards, stares up at Cas like he has in so many nightmares, but Cas is all kindness and light and  _ right there _ . The sky behind him is blue. He crouches down again, but he doesn’t take Dean’s knife, Dean doesn’t have a knife in this one, and Cas doesn’t punch, he just looks at Dean from side to side, up and down, eyes searching. They observe one another like that for a long time, in bright daylight. Bright daylight. Bright daylight itches at Dean’s eyelids. He blinks, and for once, doesn’t wake with a start. He even lets himself breathe for a second. The anger rolls back into him slowly, like a wave of slushy snow-water. He stares at the shards of glass scattered across the motel room. He curses his haunted dreams, his haunted life. He curses Castiel’s ghost. He prays for it all to stop. 


End file.
